A strain of bird flu that scientists thought could not infect people has shown up in a Taiwanese woman, a nasty surprise that shows scientists must do more to spot worrisome flu strains before they ignite a global outbreak, doctors say. On a more hopeful front, two pharmaceuticals separately reported encouraging results from human tests of a possible vaccine against a different type of bird flu that has been spreading in China since first being identified last spring, which is feared to have pandemic potential … The research was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine. – SwissInfo

Dominant Social Theme: Thank God for Big Pharma.

Free-Market Analysis: This is indeed a tremendous coincidence. Just as two pharmaceutical corporations are in the midst of researching bird flu vaccines come worrisome reports that a certain strain of bird flu is spreading from birds to humans.

You can almost see the profits lining up. AP should get a percentage for this ill-researched article that seems to be nothing but a kind of promotional literature for pharmaceutical curatives. The bird flu scare is one that the mainstream media has been touting for most of the 2000s.

We're not sure why Big Pharma mavens are making their move now, but it sure sounds like they're getting more determined to mass produce another vaccine "panacea."

Maybe it has to do with the difficulties that vaccines continue to run into in terms of public acceptance. Ever since Dr. Andrew Wakefield blew open the scandal of incipient links between autism and juvenile gut problems that may have been aggravated by vaccines, concerned parents have been far less apt to commit their children to endless programs of multiple vaccines.

We've interviewed Wakefield who was disbarred from British medicine for his troubles. Even today he is regularly attacked as a venal, scheming man who took advantage of young children to falsify his findings and doom further generations to the scourge of diseases that could be easily cured.

It's simply not true. He wrote a book fighting back, and he certainly has his defenders in the alternative media, but the vituperation aimed at Wakefield from mainstream medicine and journals is almost stupefying in its virulence.

Yet we've had personal conversations with reputable medical men who admit privately that a sizeable minority of those who receive vaccines may have some sort of adverse effect. But it is never admitted publicly for fear that the general public would become even more resistant to this "one-size-fits-all" prophylactic.

We won't argue about the efficacy of vaccines themselves, except to say that there is certainly controversy about vaccines generally … also, about the amount of scientific scrutiny they are really subject to and the ingredients with which they are mixed.

The chief dominant social theme when it comes to vaccines is that if you don`t vaccinate your child, you endanger others. This may have some validity but is nonetheless at least partially a logical fallacy. After all, vaccinated children are supposedly immune to a given disease and thus an unvaccinated child with a disease can only sicken another child in a similar situation.

Then there is the issue of the US "vaccine court" that is handing out damage awards to parents that show their children were subject to injury due to vaccinations. If the science so clearly establishes that vaccines are harmless, why are parents winning damage awards?

Here, from the Huffington Post in January 2013:

The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, better known as "vaccine court," has just awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism for "pain and suffering" and lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars …

Both cases were "unpublished," meaning information is limited, and access to medical records and other exhibits is blocked. Much of the information presented here comes from documents found at the vaccine court website. Some observers will say the vaccine-induced encephalopathy (brain disease) documented in both children is unrelated to their autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Others will say there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. What's more, these cases fit the pattern of other petitions, (i.e., Poling and Banks) in which the court ruled (or the government conceded) that vaccines had caused encephalopathy, which in turn produced permanent injury, including symptoms of autism and ultimately an ASD diagnosis.

And most of these children now have taxpayer dollars earmarked for applied behavioral analysis (ABA), an effective therapy specifically designed to treat ASD. Meanwhile, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors of both children testified they were developmentally normal, if not advanced for their age when they developed seizures, spiking fevers and other adverse reactions to their vaccines.

According to these eyewitnesses, the children never fully recovered, and instead began losing vocabulary, eye contact and interest in others around them, all classic symptoms of regressive autism.

The article also explains that the federal government did not admit that vaccines cause autism, but if it's not the case, why make the awards?

The idea seems, as usual, to deny and attempt to make sure that the truth is circulated as narrowly as possible. Meanwhile, use the mainstream media to promote the meme of the universal vaccine.

The promotional barrage continues. In this AP article, predictable, pro-vaccine points are made. Here's more:

Since the H5N1 bird flu strain first broke out in southern China in 1996, public health officials have been nervously monitoring its progress – it has so far killed more than 600 people, mostly in Asia. Several other bird flu strains, including H7N9, which was first identified in China in April, have also caused concern but none has so far mutated into a form able to spread easily among people.

"The question again is what would it take for these viruses to evolve into a pandemic strain?" wrote Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, in a commentary accompanying the new report. She said it was worrying that scientists had no early warning signals that such new bird flus could be a problem until humans fell ill.

Scientists often monitor birds to see which viruses are killing them, in an attempt to guess which flu strains might be troublesome for humans – but neither H6N1 nor H7N9 make birds very sick. Koopmans called for increased surveillance of animal flu viruses and more research into predicting which viruses might cause a global crisis.

"We can surely do better than to have human beings as sentinels," she wrote. The vaccine news is on the H7N9 bird flu that has infected at least 137 people and killed at least 45 since last spring. Scientists from Novavax Inc., a Gaithersburg, Maryland, company, say tests on 284 people suggest that after two shots of the vaccine, most made antibodies at a level that usually confers protection … Results were published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

We've been reading about this scenario for years. Sooner or later, we are told, a silent killer will be unleashed on the world that will prove even more deadly and pervasive than the influenza that struck down so many after World War One.

Of course, further investigation on the 'Net has shown us there are considerable questions about this deadly influenza. There are firsthand accounts claiming that vaccine makers had spoiled vaccines stored that they wanted to use, and in providing these ruined vaccines to returning World War One soldiers, they actually caused the pandemic they claimed to want to avoid.

And the immune systems of returning vets are in question, too. Exhausted by trench warfare, the vets were no doubt more susceptible to disease than other populations. For all these reasons it could be that the influenza of World War One has been oversold as a fear-based meme that could strike at any moment and reduce populations by tens of millions.

Not all vaccines are miracles all the time, and sometimes they can prove quite injurious. Eventually, this will surely become more publicly acknowledged and presumably will have an impact on pharmaceutical valuations and bottom lines.

Deservedly so.